Josh Brolin gave the best performance as a corrupt police officer. He displayed perfectly the corrupt cop blackmailing both sides for the benefit of himself.

She barley even had a cameo in this movie. It is kind of sad to see how far Cuba Gooding Jr. What really kept this movie up and kind of brought it down was its steady flow and writing.

It did show you some interesting things such as going to Vietnam and having a very unique and surprising place to smuggle in the drugs.

Yet as I mentioned before the performances were good but not great because of the writing. I attribute this to the writing. Some of the writing did not allow some of the actors to expand as much as they could have on their roles.

Also the directing was very good but not great. Ridley Scott did show some interesting scenes and had good camera shot. The cinematography was good as well.

Yet because the performances were not to great that brings him down because his job to guide arguably two of the best actors today. This movie was a bit over-hyped but I would still recommend it.

Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Full Cast and Crew. Watch Now With Prime Video. An outcast New York City cop is charged with bringing down Harlem drug lord Frank Lucas, whose real life inspired this partly biographical film.

Steven Zaillian , Mark Jacobson article. Does the "Mayans M. Share this Rating Title: American Gangster 7. Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin.

Nominated for 2 Oscars. Learn more More Like This. Man on Fire The Book of Eli With this evidence they obtain a warrant to follow the drugs into Newark's projects and Lucas' heroin processing facility.

In the ensuing shootout, Steve Lucas, Frank Lucas' young nephew who gave up a promising career for the New York Yankees to join Lucas' crime family, is killed.

Meanwhile, Trupo, whose prized Shelby Mustang Lucas had destroyed, and his men break into Lucas' mansion to steal his emergency cash supply hidden under the doghouse, killing the dog.

As Lucas gets ready to go after Trupo, his mother dissuades him from killing a cop, warning him that she and Eva will leave him if he does.

Lucas is arrested after Roberts' team conducts a raid on the shops run by his brothers. In the police station, Lucas offers to bribe Roberts, but is rebuffed.

Instead, Roberts offers Lucas a chance at a shorter jail sentence if he aids his investigation of dirty cops in the NYPD and Lucas duly provides Roberts with the names.

Roberts, having just passed the bar exam, defends Lucas as his first client. Lucas is sentenced to 70 years in prison, of which he serves 15 years and is released in However, Scott did not immediately pursue the project, choosing to make Kingdom of Heaven instead.

Production of Tru Blu was reset to begin in early fall , with the film slated for a release date of June 3, The studio also sought for American Gangster to be produced in Toronto rather than New York City to save money, but Fuqua resisted the re-location.

The studio's parent company General Electric received tax credits in New York City, so production was moved to the city.

Fuqua's camp insisted that it was seeking ways to reduce the budget, but the studio contended several aspects of the project under him.

The director had wanted to film a Vietnam sequence in Thailand and to cast notable names such as Ray Liotta and John C.

Reilly in minor roles. To add to the studio's budgetary concerns, Fuqua was rewriting the script during the preproduction process. The director also did not have a shot-list, final locations, and supporting actors signed to initiate production.

Fuqua was fired on October 1, , four weeks before principal photography would begin. After a meeting between Scott and Zaillian on another project, Zaillian brought the project up again with Scott, who decided he was ready to do it.

Washington returned to his role as Lucas, and Russell Crowe was attached to star as Roberts. Scott had discussed the script with Crowe as they worked on A Good Year in France, and they sought to take on the project.

The director reviewed Zaillian's script, Terry George's rewrite, and a revision by Richard Price during the project's incarnation with director Antoine Fuqua.

Scott preferred Zaillian's approach and chose to follow it. In realizing the project, the director encountered a challenge in the script since the characters Frank Lucas and Richie Roberts do not encounter each other until twenty minutes before the end of the film.

The director sought to flesh out the private universes of the characters that would evolve and have scenes cut between the two characters to provide a balance.

Elements like Frank Lucas's interaction with his family and Richie Roberts' dysfunctional marriage were written to add to the characters' backgrounds.

The film somewhat focuses on the comparatively ethical business practices of the "wicked gangster" and the womanizing and failed marriage of the "do-gooder" police detective.

Washington, who was not normally a fan of gangster films, chose to portray Lucas when he saw "the arc of the character" had ended with prices that Lucas paid for his actions.

Principal photography began in July in New York City. Approximately fifty to sixty locations were set in Harlem alone.

While in the neighbourhood, Scott stated that he found several interiors that had been untouched since the s.

Scott found filming in Harlem to be difficult, commenting that the rapid gentrification in Harlem provided poor opportunities for shooting angles.

Briarcliff Manor in upstate New York had the locations for both the Lucas farm and the estate Lucas buys for his family. Using his experience from visiting New York in the same time period in which the film's story took place, Scott sought to downplay a " Beatles " atmosphere to the film and to instead create a shabbier atmosphere, saying that "Harlem was really, really shabby, beautiful brownstones falling apart.

Denzel Washington, as Frank Lucas, went through 64 different costume changes. In , Greg Calloway was approached by producers to produce a soundtrack for the film.

He presented the idea to Atlantic Records chairman Craig Kallman , and one of the company's artists, T. However, the deal did not go further because Universal Pictures owned the rights to the film; "It was a Universal film and they were not going to give the soundtrack to WMG " Atlantic's parent company.

The composer stated that "the overall tone needed to be something bigger and darker" given the characters' strong personalities, and while not being the original intention, he added shades of blues and soul music to fit the s setting.

Additional score material was composed and recorded by Hank Shocklee. The official soundtrack album for American Gangster was released by Def Jam Recordings within a week of the film's release.

Denzel Washington pressed Grazer into inviting rapper Jay-Z to write the film's score, but the producer "just didn't think there'd be enough for Jay-Z to do" given the intentions to do a soundtrack filled with s music.

The film had a profound resonance on the musician, who decided to create a concept album, also entitled American Gangster. It was speculated that the album's release in conjunction with the film would attract a young audience and help Universal Pictures generate profits to recover from the film's troubled development history.

It immediately clicked with me. Like Scarface or any one of those films, you take the good out of it, and you can see it as an inspiring film.

The film experienced similar success overseas. It ranked as the 19th highest-grossing film of both domestically and worldwide. The home release included an unrated extended version of the film, featuring 18 additional minutes and an alternative ending.

A mobile game based on the film was released by Gameloft on November 1. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film a perfect four star rating and opined, "This is an engrossing story, told smoothly and well.

In comparison, some reviewers were more critical of American Gangster. Jonathan Crocker of Time Out London was polarized with the film, criticizing its aesthetics.

Schager remarked that the film was "dumb as a rock", and that it was "far too convinced of its import to be any fun. That shoulder-shimmying swagger is rarely seen, and the brand-classic robes of American Gangster sit on him heavily.

Roberts criticized the portrayal of Lucas, describing it as "almost noble".

Nobody used to notice Frank Lucas, the quiet driver to one of the inner city's leading black crime bosses. But when his boss suddenly dies, Frank exploits the opening in the power structure to build his own empire and create his own version of the American Dream.

Through ingenuity and a strict business ethic, he comes to rule the inner-city drug trade, flooding the streets with a purer product at a better price.

Lucas outplays all of the leading crime syndicates and becomes not only one of the city's mainline corrupters, but part of its circle of legit civic superstars.

Richie Roberts is an outcast cop close enough to the streets to feel a shift of control in the drug underworld.

Roberts believes someone is climbing the rungs above the known Mafia families and starts to suspect that a black power player has come from nowhere to dominate the scene.

Both Lucas and Roberts share a rigorous ethical code that sets them apart from their own colleagues, making them lone figures on opposite sides of the law.

The destinies of these two men will become intertwined as they approach a confrontation where only one of them can come out on top. John Hawkes , Steven Zaillian.

Ridley Scott's gangster flick aims high and mostly measures up. October 18, Full Review…. February 3, Rating: November 14, Rating: November 6, Full Review….

November 5, Full Review…. November 3, Rating: July 14, Rating: July 7, Rating: Flattened by Scott's cardboard evocation of New York in the '70s, Zaillian's shallow criticism of corrupting power, and weirdly bloodless performances August 27, Full Review….

View All Audience Reviews. You can be successful and have enemies or you can be unsuccessful and have friends. Josh Brolin gave the best performance as a corrupt police officer.

He displayed perfectly the corrupt cop blackmailing both sides for the benefit of himself. She barley even had a cameo in this movie.

It is kind of sad to see how far Cuba Gooding Jr. What really kept this movie up and kind of brought it down was its steady flow and writing. It did show you some interesting things such as going to Vietnam and having a very unique and surprising place to smuggle in the drugs.

Yet as I mentioned before the performances were good but not great because of the writing. I attribute this to the writing.

Some of the writing did not allow some of the actors to expand as much as they could have on their roles. Also the directing was very good but not great.

Ridley Scott did show some interesting scenes and had good camera shot. The cinematography was good as well. Yet because the performances were not to great that brings him down because his job to guide arguably two of the best actors today.

This movie was a bit over-hyped but I would still recommend it. This probably could have received more recognition from the Oscars though.

Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Full Cast and Crew. Watch Now With Prime Video. An outcast New York City cop is charged with bringing down Harlem drug lord Frank Lucas, whose real life inspired this partly biographical film.